Goth Chick News: A24 Comes at Us Hard With Their Latest (Risky) Release – But Is It Horror, or Reality, or Both…?

Goth Chick News: A24 Comes at Us Hard With Their Latest (Risky) Release – But Is It Horror, or Reality, or Both…?

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If you hang around here often, then you know we here at Goth Chick News love a good indie horror film, and if it comes to us via Daniel Katz, David Fenkel, and John Hodges, aka the independent film company A24, we love it even more. Founded a mere thirteen years ago, A24 has been a juggernaut in the horror industry with such titles as The Witch (2015), Hereditary (2018), Midsommer (2019), and Talk to Me (2023). In all, A24 has cranked out an incredible 156 movies across multiple genres, but it has been horror that has gained them the most mainstream attention.

Considering the creativity of A24 titles, it seems almost inevitable that current headlines would eventually provide source material. Most A24 plots have a deeper social commentary anyway, but their current outing is incredibly interesting on a few levels. Civil War, from writer-director Alex Garland (28 Days Later, Dredd, Ex Machina), represents a fairly risky venture for our favorite indie company.

Allow me to explain.

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Brian Stableford, July 25, 1948 – February 24, 2024

Brian Stableford, July 25, 1948 – February 24, 2024

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The Last Days of the Edge of the World (Ace Books, September 1985), The Empire of Fear
(Ballantine Books, October 1993), and The Werewolves of London (Carroll & Graf,
November 1994). Covers by Don Maitz, uncredited, and uncredited

Perhaps it is recency bias, or poor memory, or some other artifact of how human minds process data, but I cannot recall a time when the science fiction field lost so many significant writers in such a short time. At any rate, I know I have never written so many obituaries for significant SF writers in such a short time!

Brian Stableford died February 24, after an extended period of poor health. He was 75. I never met him, and only corresponded with him as part of a mailing list (he did recommend a time viewer story to me!), but I have read his work extensively, and even so, have barely scratched the surface.

His bibliography is, frankly, intimidating. He wrote dozens of SF and Fantasy novels, as many or more short stories. He was a very prolific anthologist, with a particular interest in early SF, and, especially, in French works of fantastika. He translated countless* French novels and stories into English. He wrote hundreds of book reviews and essays, and published many non-fiction books. And for all that prolificity, his work was of exceptional quality.

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Avatar: The Last Airbender; A Worthy Adaptation?

Avatar: The Last Airbender; A Worthy Adaptation?

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Why hello!

Well, Netflix has dropped the first season of its live-action adaptation of the much beloved animated show Avatar: The Last Airbender. It just so happened that it dropped just as I was falling very ill and had no energy to do anything but binge television. So, naturally, I’m going to talk about it. A few caveats before the hard-core fans come after me for what seems like a controversial opinion on the show (based on what I’ve read).

First, I came to the animated show quite late. I was already a full adult, with a fully formed pre-frontal cortex and everything. AtLAB was not, by any stretch, a formative part of my childhood in the way The Transformers or The X-Men cartoons were for me (aging myself here). I do adore the animated show, but I’m also not connected to it in the way that those who grew up watching it are.

Second, I’m much more lenient for adaptations than a lot of folks, I’ve come to realise. Certainly, there are just some that are horrendous (looking at you, M. Night), but most of the time, I’m okay with the changes made, so long as the spirit of the thing remains intact.

With these things in mind, let’s crack on, shall we?

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Jack Tracy’s ‘The Published Apocrypha’

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Jack Tracy’s ‘The Published Apocrypha’

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I am bringing back The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes for a Doyle-centric run in April. Getting in the mood, here’s my review of Jack Tracy’s cornerstone book, Sherlock Holmes: The Published Apocrypha.

Sherlockians like to hold the Canon (Doyle’s sixty Holmes stories) in the same esteem that Christians hold the Bible. So it should come as no surprise that there are some works by Doyle that are comparable to apocrypha. The term refers to early Christian writings not included in the Bible.

Jack Tracy, author of the superb Encyclopedia Sherlockiana, collected some authentic and near-authentic Holmes works that are not part of the Canon. Few books made up of Holmes fiction can justifiably sit on your bookshelf next to Doyle’s short stories and novels about the wisest and finest man Dr. Watson ever knew. This book should be the very first one.

No one who has looked at Tracy’s Encyclopedia can doubt his Sherlockian scholarship. He utilizes his vast knowledge in an efficient and readable way in Sherlock Holmes: The Published Apocrypha. Each section begins with info about the writings that follow. Interesting and “must know” details set the stage for the pieces themselves.

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Andre Norton: Gateway to Magic, Part I

Andre Norton: Gateway to Magic, Part I

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The Zero Stone (Viking, November 1968), Breed to Come (Viking, April 1972), and
Galactic Derelict (World Publishing, 1959). Covers by Robin Jacques, László Gál, and Ed Emshwiller

Andre Norton (1912 -2005): between ages 12 and 16 I probably read more Andre Norton books than any other author. Our small town library didn’t have a huge selection of SF/Fantasy works but someone in their purchasing department seemed OK with Norton, and that was a happy thing for me.

As painful as it is to report, it’s also probably a good thing that Alice Mary Norton chose to write under the name Andre. I just assumed Norton was a man, and I wonder if I would have been as quick to pick up her books if I’d known it was a woman behind the covers. Nowadays it makes no difference, but it might have affected my choices as a teenage boy.

Norton wrote both SF and fantasy, although the earliest books I read by her were firmly in the SF camp. The X Factor, The Zero Stone, and Galactic Derelict. Galactic Derelict is a particular favorite of mine, and one I’ve reread several times (something I very very rarely do.)

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Vintage Treasures: The Augmented Agent by Jack Vance

Vintage Treasures: The Augmented Agent by Jack Vance

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The Augmented Agent (Ace Books, September 1988). Cover by Terry Oakes

I need to read more Jack Vance.

It’s not hard to do. Virtually all of his short fiction has been collected over the years, in places like the five-volume The Early Jack Vance, edited by Terry Dowling and Jonathan Strahan, and the massive The Jack Vance Treasury.

Of course, those are small press collections, and if you’re looking for a more affordable way to dip your toe into the fast-moving waters of Jack Vance, then I recommend one of his fine paperback collections, like The Worlds of Jack Vance, The Best of Jack Vance, or today’s Vintage Treasure, The Augmented Agent, which collects eight Vance rarities, chiefly pulp adventures tales from very early in his career.

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A to Z Reviews: “Permission,” by Mark Dachuk

A to Z Reviews: “Permission,” by Mark Dachuk

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A to Z Reviews

Tesseracts is a Canadian anthology series that published 23 issues between 1985 and 2019. First edited by Judith Merril, each subsequent volume was edited by different authors and featuring new science fiction by various Canadian authors. One volume, Tesseracts Q, edited by Jane Brierley and Elisabeth Vonarburg, featured English reprints of stories originally published in French. Mark Dachuk’s “Permission” appeared in Tesseracts Ten in 2006, edited by Edo van Belkom and Robert Charles Wilson.

Dachuk has created a world in which everyone’s goal appears to be to leave the planet earth. Luana lives alone in a small house with an attached garden. When rockets launch from a nearby facility, she looks at them longingly, wanting to leave the world behind, but she doesn’t have the wherewithal to purchase her own tickets to leave the earth. Her hopes rest in the possibility that one of the plants growing on her property, the permission, will one day flower. She surmises that the house’s previous owner was lucky enough to get a blossom, which led to his departure.

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Future Treasures: Collecting Myself: The Uncollected Stories of Barry N. Malzberg, edited by Robert Friedman and Gregory Shepard

Future Treasures: Collecting Myself: The Uncollected Stories of Barry N. Malzberg, edited by Robert Friedman and Gregory Shepard

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Collecting Myself: The Uncollected Stories of Barry N. Malzberg
(Stark House, March 8, 2024). Cover by Jeff Jordan

Barry N. Malzberg has had an enormously prolific career. He published his first science fiction story the August 1967 issue of Galaxy magazine, and over the next six decades has produced an astounding 500+ short stories, dozens of novels, eleven anthologies, and nearly two dozen collections. These days he’s well known as a genre historian and critic. That’s him on the back cover above, looking suitably curmudgeonly.

He’s currently enjoying something of a career renaissance, courtesy of editor Robert Friedman and publisher Gregory Shepard at Stark House Press, who together have returned some thirty-five Malzberg books to print. To mark that accomplishment, their latest Malzberg volume is something special. Not a reprint at all, but a brand new volume gathering thirty-five uncollected short stories. Collecting Myself: The Uncollected Stories of Barry N. Malzberg will be available on March 8.

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Great Books Make You Cry

Great Books Make You Cry

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John Crowley’s Flint and Mirror (Tor, April 2022), Engine Summer (Bantam, December 1983), and The
Translator (William Morrow/HarperCollins, April 2002). Covers: unknown, Yvonne Gilbert, Chin-Yee Lai

Recently I mentioned that passages in John Crowley’s Flint and Mirror made me cry… and it was (nicely) hinted that maybe it’s odd for men to cry while reading.

The thing is, I cry often while reading. Sometimes for sad events, sometimes for joy, sometimes for anger, sometimes for wonder, sometimes for sheer beauty.

I mean, Crowley does it to me all the time. The conclusion of Engine Summer makes me tear up just thinking about it. (“Ever after. I promise. Now close your eyes.”) And the same for a few passages in The Translator. I was tearing up just trying to talk about “Great Work of Time” at a panel at Boskone a few years ago.

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Hither Came Scott Oden: The Shadow of Vengeance, a Sequel Robert E. Howard SHOULD have Written

Hither Came Scott Oden: The Shadow of Vengeance, a Sequel Robert E. Howard SHOULD have Written

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Conan: The Shadow of Vengeance (Titan Books, January 30, 2024)

Octavia tore her gaze from the grisly noose. Hope fluttered in her breast, for through the guttering smoke from scores of torches she saw the Cimmerian astride his mighty stallion. He stood motionless, a statue hewn from whalebone and gristle — save for his eyes. Even with the breadth of the Red Brotherhood between them, Octavia recognized the death fires kindled in those cold blue orbs.

There is a magic to some writer’s prose; it pulses and pounds, like Robert E. Howard writing about Conan, or has a clever, articulate subliminity in which a bright man finds himself feeling the fool in a genius’s shadow (Doyle’s Watson writing about Holmes), that infuses a character and their canon.

This is part of what makes pastiche such a tricky business to evaluate and review. Some hate the idea of pastiche, in which case, any review is pointless. On the other hand, pastiche — the continuation of an author’s characters in new adventures is a long-established tradition that reaches back to the tales of the pre-Classical world and continues on the reams of unlicensed fan-fic. So, let’s leave that debate for elsewhere, and just assume that you are this far because you love Robert E. Howard, you love Conan, and you want that pulse-pounding, blood-and-thunder sense of adventure you experienced long ago.

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